FactoryPMI and FactorySQL Benchmark Whitepaper Summary

Ever wondered how many clients you could really run with FactoryPMI's unlimited client licensing? How about the maximum tag throughput of SQLTags on a MySQL database? Inductive Automation has published a whitepaper detailing the results of rigorous performance tests on its products, FactoryPMI^TM and FactorySQL^TM. These benchmarks will answer these questions and more.

You can download the benchmarks here http://www.inductiveautomation.com/products/whitepapers/IABenchmarkWhitepaper2008.pdf.

For those of you who do not have the time to wade through 14 pages of technical benchmark methodology and results, here is the executive summary. The benchmarks are divided up into two major tests. The first test monitored the FactoryPMI Gateway under high concurrent load count to determine how many clients FactoryPMI can support at a time. The test was run on large and small servers, and with large and small projects. With a small server, you can expect to run between 70-100 clients at a time, depending on the size of your project. With a large server, those clients counts go up to 150+. Within these ranges, you can expect tags to update at their proper rates, and expect sub-second write-to-readback round-trip times. Note that these projects were using pure-SQLTags for data display.

The second test involved the SQLTags throughput between FactorySQL and various databases. We found that MySQL with the MyISAM data engine and Microsoft SQL Server gave the best performance. We frequently hear the question: "How many tags can I have". It turns out, the real question should be: "How many tags can I have changing per second". This is because a tag's presence in the system doesn't dramatically affect performance unless it is changing. So, systems with upwards of 250,000 tags are feasible, as long as only a small percentage of them are actively changing every second. This benchmark found that the tag throughput for a low-end server or high-end desktop computer, ranges between 2,500, and 13,000 tag changes per second. The factors that contribute to this are wide spread are explained in detail in the whitepaper.

Inductive Automation
Inductive Automation pioneered the first full-featured web-launched HMI/SCADA system in the world. Its standards based, database-centric architecture receives accolades from plant managers, IT managers, and system integrators worldwide. With a commitment to software quality and technical support second to none, Inductive Automation is at the forefront of industrial software.